Mark Bridge writes:

I wasn’t supposed to be at this year’s AMEE 2012 conference in Lyon. AMEE is the Association for Medical Education in Europe, which - as you can probably guess - has very little direct connection with the mobile phone industry. However, my wife was going because she works in medical education. Me?  I fancied a trip to France.

Mark Bridge visits the AMEE 2012 conference to discover how mobile devices and mobile applications are being used in medical education.

This report covers everything from social networking to specialist teaching apps for medical students.

A mobile health system from Telefónica is being given a tough real-world test by four diabetic people who are climbing to the base camp of Mount Everest.

Each member of the expedition, which is being led by climber and astronaut Josu Feijoo, will carry a glucometer and a tablet device with an m-health application. Internet connectivity for the tablet will be provided via WiFi from a satellite terminal.

A new report from healthcare industry analysts GlobalData forecasts that the value of the global mobile health (m-Health) market will grow from $1.2 billion last year to $11.8 billion by 2018, the equivalent of 39% growth every year.

mHealth, which involves the use of mobile applications and devices to monitor a patient’s health remotely, is growing as the adoption of smartphones and tablets increases.

A new report from Juniper Research says ‘smart accessories’ that connect with mobile phones will become a major new market for manufacturers over the next five years. Examples of these wireless accessories include health monitoring equipment, fitness accessories and payment devices.

It forecasts that just over 10 million task-specific smart devices will be produced this year, with annual sales expected to exceed 100 million units by 2017.